KARACHI, Dec 10: Univer-sities greatly contribute towards the economic uplift of a country by producing experts of various fields. By spending enormous funds under the umbrella of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the government has really helped improve the standard of higher education in the country.

These observations were made by the acting director of the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), Prof Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhry, at the inaugural ceremony of a daylong workshop titled ‘ The concept of University-based technology parks in the light of global experiences’ held here on Monday at the University of Karachi.

More than 50 participants attended the workshop, jointly organised by the ICCBS, the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS), Unesco and Pakistan National Commission on Unesco (PNCU).

Dr Choudhry said that the basic aim of the workshop was to discuss the effectiveness of University-based technology parks and to create awareness about technology parks in the developing economies.

He said that originally the term technology park had a very limited scope.

However, this concept now included a much braoder range of services/ functions, including economic development and technology transfer, he said.

“Technology Parks foster the creation of new and sustainable innovation-based companies through incubation and spin-off processes”, he added.

Speaking as chief guest on the occasion, the KU dean faculty of Science, Prof Dr Fahimuddin, said that technology park was an organisation managed by specialised professionals, whose main aim was to increase the wealth of its community by promoting the culture of innovation and competitiveness of its associated businesses as well as commercialisation of research and knowledge-based institutions.

He said that one of the basic reasons to establish university-based technology parks was to link the industry and agriculture sector with new technological developments at the research and development institutions.

“Such technology parks can provide the basic flagship platform for universities to establish a network of incubation companies in specified fields of science and technology”, he said.

A Jordanian scientist, Dr Khalid Kahhaleh, and Dr Fatima Shad also spoke.—PPI